


Summer is Ending (What If)

by writerforlife



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Fluff, M/M, gratuitous heaps of introspection and emotion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-28
Updated: 2016-08-28
Packaged: 2018-08-11 15:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,926
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7897771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerforlife/pseuds/writerforlife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summer is ending, college is coming, and Adam is worried. Ronan helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer is Ending (What If)

**Author's Note:**

> This was super spontaneous and very lightly edited, but I ended up liking it! Hope everyone enjoys

Somehow, Adam thought impossibly, summer was ending.

The seemingly endless days, marked by yellow-orange skies well into the evening and fireflies forming constellations in the darkness, grew shorter. The sunset over the Barns didn’t last quite as long as it did in early July. Ronan’s tanned skin receded back to white. The prominence of his freckles decreased. 

Summer was ending, and Adam was scared.

 

The weeks had been almost too good. He moved out of the cramped apartment over St. Agnes and into the Barns with Ronan. He saw Gansey, Blue, and Henry nearly every day. He laughed with Opal, chasing her through the fields and letting her tuck flowers into his hair. He lived with Ronan.

It was the most mundane way to think of it, but  _ lived with Ronan _ was an entity that Adam depended upon. It meant waking up next to him, discovering that he always slept on his stomach, seeing the morning light stream over his tattoo. It meant walking into the kitchen barefoot, the wooden floor solid under his feet, and making a cup of coffee in what had become his mug like he belonged. It meant spending the day being eighteen and stupid with his boyfriend. It meant watching the sunset on the hood of the BMW and not going to sleep until three in the morning.

It wasn’t perfect. Ronan had nightmares twice a week as a minimum. Adam couldn’t stand to look at his own hands. Blue told him that Gansey had trouble sleeping sometimes and remembering details of his life (he had been rebuilt by Cabeswater, after all). In Adam’s eyes, the pain was temporary.

But he had always been a man of logic. Even when he had nothing but black eyes and sore ribs, he had logic. He couldn’t let go of it, and as summer ended, his logical side tormented him. If the pain was temporary, why couldn’t happiness be temporary as well? 

These thoughts plagued him at 3:38 at in the morning exactly a week and two days before he was scheduled to leave for Harvard. He knew the exact time because he had been staring at the clock since precisely 2:06. One hour and thirty-two minutes in a cycle of endless thoughts. Ronan slept next to him, free of nightmares. Adam was grateful for that, at least. One of them should be able to sleep.

He rose from the bed, pushing the sheets back gently so as not to wake Ronan. Then, he tiptoed from the room and went to the kitchen. Ronan had gone grocery shopping, so the only healthy food within a twenty-mile radius was probably mashed up into the food for the animals. Adam smiled to himself and toasted a s’mores Pop Tart.

He sat down at the table and stared at his plate. He wasn’t really hungry, but making food had been something to do. 

The Barns’ kitchen was special to him. To a stranger’s eye, it was just a kitchen. Oven, toaster, cabinets, dirty dishes, clean dishes, coffee pot, food. But Adam knew better. The oven and the toaster were both dreamed up. The toaster never burned anything, and the oven preheated in under a minute and turned off by itself. Ronan didn’t believe in separating dishes so you could find a dish towel, recipe book, cookie sheet, and shot glass all in one cabinet. There was a plate with a chip in it because Ronan had kissed Adam’s neck when he was washing it. Ronan had dreamt the coffee pot to make coffee exactly the way Adam liked it. There were memories here.

If he walked around the rest of the house, he would have found memories there, too. In the living room, watching cheesy horror movies that Gansey overanalyzed and Ronan mock-screamed at. In the hallway, Ronan walking in, soaked through from a stray thunderstorm, with the book Adam wanted to read. On the porch, sitting with Ronan and Opal and watching the deer in the type of silence that made you feel whole. In the bedroom, tracing the line of Ronan’s tattoo, and once, even coloring in the spaces with markers. 

At college, none of this would be there. He would be in a dorm room. Bed, couch, mini fridge, desk, chair. Nothing more. If someone walked in and asked him to tell a story about one object in the room, he would have nothing at college. 

More importantly, he wouldn’t have Ronan. Not only would he not have Ronan, he wouldn’t have Gansey, Blue, Henry, Maura, or even Opal. Nobody to say,  _ Oh, I know Adam Parrish. I can speak for him _ . He would have to make his own way. 

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t done it before. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t entered a school where he knew he would be a pariah and made a name for himself. And now that he had so much, he didn’t want to go back to having nothing. 

He wanted to go to college. There was no other option in Adam’s eyes. College had always been his true north, the concept that had taken on a life of its own and grown into a towering, concrete, frighteningly material item. It was only that he didn’t want to go to college and fail. What if he didn’t succeed in his classes? What if his classmates heard his accent and didn’t take him seriously? Would he fit in? Would Ronan come to visit? What if-

“Parrish, it’s a fucking crime to let a Pop Tart get cold.” Ronan’s voice startled Adam. He looked up to see Ronan, shirtless and wearing only boxers, stubble on his face and sleep in his eyes. Adam didn’t say a word as Ronan took the plate and threw it in the trash along with the food.

“What?” he asked when Adam rolled his eyes. “You don’t like Pop Tarts and that plate is a piece of shit. It’s a win-win.” He moved around the kitchen, taking out cream, sugar, and finally, the mug he had bought for Adam a few weeks ago. It was a deep green and had patterns of leaves on it. He had handed it to Adam sheepishly, the tips of his ears pink, and Adam had used it every morning since. 

After a few moments, he set the mug of coffee in front of Adam and sat down across from him. Adam took a sip and nodded. Ronan turned his head to the side, but Adam still saw the flush in his cheeks. Neither one of them spoke, but words weren’t needed.

Until they were. “You gonna tell me why you were staring at a toaster pastry like it held the meaning of life?” Ronan asked. “I thought Gansey was the crazy insomniac in our friend group.”

Adam stared at his hands. Of all the things in the world, he sometimes felt his hands were the greatest paradox. His hands had opened an acceptance letter from Harvard. His hands had been covered in grease. Created magic. Been balled into a fist. Touched lips. Touched blood. With his hands, he had held Ronan’s hand and also wrapped them around his neck. He couldn’t figure himself out.

“Earth to Parrish,” Ronan said casually, but Adam could hear traces of worry. That’s what Ronan did. He masked what he felt so as to make people believe he didn’t care. The time for masks was over, though.

“What if I’m not good enough?” Adam whispered. “When I get to Harvard, what if I do terribly? What if I can’t get good enough grades and then I won’t be able to go to law school and what will happen then?” He let his head fall to the table.

“Bullshit,” Ronan said. 

“Excuse me?”

“That’s bullshit. You’ll be fine. You always are.”

“But what  _ if _ ?” Adam stood up and paced the floor. “Everyone is expecting me to go away and come back and do incredible things. I can’t disappoint everyone.” He couldn’t say it out loud, but in his mind, by everyone, he meant Ronan. 

“Parrish -” Ronan started.

Now that Adam had started, he couldn’t stop. “I can’t waste this. I can’t just do badly and then turn around like nothing happened. I can’t -”

“Parrish.” Ronan stood and put his hands on Adam’s shoulder. He guided him back to the chair and sat him down. For a moment, he stared at Adam with his nose crinkled, but then took a deep breath and relaxed. “You’re not going to fail. I know that. You work harder than fucking everyone combined here. What makes you think that’s going to change at college?” Ronan paused, and then went on. “And I can’t say for the others, but you could not work or go to school for the rest of your life and I would still be proud of you. You will never disappoint me.”

Adam’s ear was ringing. “You’re proud of me?” he echoed. 

“Don’t tell anyone,” Ronan muttered, averting his eyes. “But very. Every day. Don’t let it go to your head.”

The table length between them suddenly felt too big. “Let’s go back to bed.” They walked through the hallway hand-in-hand and laid down in bed together. Adam rested his head on Ronan’s chest. He could feel his heart beating, a steady drumbeat.  _ I am alive _ , it proclaimed.  _ I have survived so much and I am still alive. I have survived night terrors and death and destruction and I am still here.  _

“I’m proud of you, too,” Adam murmured.

“What for?” Ronan asked. In the darkness, he didn’t sound so brash. He sounded eighteen and afraid. 

“For being you. No one’s like you.”

Ronan snorted. “I’m such a special snowflake.”

Adam chuckled and smiled into his chest. “Don’t ruin it.” Ronan rubbed lazy circles into his back. Maybe it was the darkness, or maybe it was just feeling so protected. Safe. “I’m scared,” he mumbled. 

Ronan sat up abruptly. Adam made a noise of protest at the movement. “What are you scared of?”

“I don’t know. Failing. Leaving. Not leaving. Losing you.”

Ronan sighed. Then he gently laid Adam down on his back and leaned over him. Their faces were inches apart. Adam could feel Ronan’s chest rise and fall. “Adam,” he whispered. “Adam. I promise you that you will not lose me. No matter what. You can’t get rid of me so easily.” There was a half-smirk on his face. “I’ll visit you so much that people will think I live there and we’ll annoying your roommates by having loud sex.”

Adam felt his face turn red and he chuckled. Ronan kissed his forehead, then his cheek, then his collarbone, and finally, his lips. “I love you,” he whispered. 

The first time Ronan had said those words, they were driving late at night. He had said them tentatively, which threw Adam off because Ronan didn’t do anything with hesitation. Adam didn’t say it back for two weeks, but when he did, it was casually, when they were watching TV. He had said it quietly, and at first, Adam thought he hadn’t heard, but then Ronan had kissed him hard. Since then, Ronan wasn’t shy with his  _ I love you _ s. He always said it like all three words mattered, like all three words built something he could hold in his heart. 

“I love you,” Adam replied. He yawned and drew the blankets up to his chin. 

“You’re a fucking awful insomniac.”

“I know.” He curled up into Ronan. “Goodnight. Thank you.”


End file.
